Angel Face

THIRTEEN

Angel’s glad. Glad to be out by herself, glad to be wearing her own clothes, glad for the soft Saturday night. Carter’s off on some mission that doesn’t include her, this following an afternoon they spent at her apartment where she packed every suitcase she owns with her ‘achiever’ wardrobe. Not boutique (that will come later), or even all-designer, her outfits nevertheless mark her as upwardly mobile. Tonight she’s wearing skinny jeans, a red blouse that reveals a fashionable line of cleavage, a midnight-blue leather jacket, and Cynthia Vincent wedges that add two inches to the length of her already long legs. The True Religion jeans came from Saks, but the top was bought a year ago at Macy’s, while the jacket came from a discount leather shop on Orchard Street. Still, she looks good and she knows it.

Along with dozens of unattached twenty-somethings, Angel’s walking along Avenue A on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The clubs in this part of town cater to every taste, from ratty punk bars to slick, neon-lighted pubs designed for bottom-rung Wall Street wannabes. Naturally, on a Saturday night, the hormones are flying, male and female, and Angel, who doesn’t fear the competition, is in her element.

The compliments, not to mention the outright propositions, polite and vulgar, come from all sides. Although she occasionally plays the hook-up game, Angel ignores the intrusions. Carter’s enough to satisfy her bad-boy appetites. Only the night before, he’d briefly taken her into his world, revealing an entirely unsuspected dimension. He’d stripped down to a pair of gym shorts an hour after dinner, then produced an ebony box with African animals carved into the wood, dozens of them. The box was impressive enough, but then he lifted the cover to reveal a pair of ceremonial jade daggers in the shape of fire-breathing dragons.

Carter had carried box and daggers to a room cleared of furniture at the back of the apartment, then put on a show that was half-dance, half-meditation. He’d covered the entire room, a dagger in either hand, his movements fast, then slow, then fast again, now smooth and fluid, now as stylized as a Maori war dance. Later, after the daggers and the box were stowed in the back of a closet, he explained that his workout, culled from a number of fighting traditions, was as practical as it was unique, every movement designed to ward off an attacker.

The physical end – the grace, speed, precision, agility – came as no surprise to Angel. But there was a level of creative sophistication to Leonard Carter that she’d never suspected. The daggers were Burmese and very old – they had to be worth many thousands of dollars. (Carter had only been willing to admit they were paid for in blood.) They were also beautiful, an actual treasure that might have been on display at the Asia Society. And the elaborate dance he’d performed with them, derived or not, was his own creation.

Angel had briefly studied Zen Buddhism at a storefront temple, back when she was a newly arrived immigrant. After only a few weeks, she came to realize that the religion demanded a commitment she wasn’t prepared to make, whereupon she dropped out. Now, as she crosses Eleventh Street, she remembers her instructor, a Japanese monk who wasn’t above making a pass at her, causally mentioning that Zen’s most ardent practitioners in pre-modern Japan were Samurai warriors. Raised a Christian, Angel embraced a gentle-Christ view of religion that didn’t include a warrior caste vicious enough to behead peasants for daring to look at them. Carter, apparently, was beyond such delusions, beauty and death playing equal parts in his performance.

Angel’s musings are interrupted when five skateboarders in torn jeans and ratty T-shirts fly out of Tompkins Square Park. They tear across the sidewalk and into the street where they play chicken with the traffic on Avenue A. Bemused, Angel watches them for a moment. The Lower East Side is all about diversity, a mix of types that includes Latinos from the housing projects along Avenue D, chess hustlers who dominate the park’s south-east corner, ex-patriot Brits who gravitate to faux-pubs like The Clerkenwell. Something for everyone, a new adventure every night. There’s even a bar-restaurant, Bondi Road, that caters to Australians.

A few minutes later, Angel walks into Prime Numbers, a dance club on Sixth Street. Barry Martin, the club’s owner, stands near a door leading to the basement. Always suspicious, he’s supervising a Latino busboy engaged in restocking the bar. The air is filled with techno music piped down from the second-story dance floor.

‘Angel, where you been, girl? Me long time no see.’ A Jamaican, Barry’s voice runs up and down the octaves, his accent far too thick for the Princeton graduate he is. Nevertheless, his enthusiasm’s heartfelt. Attractive women are the lifeblood of bars catering to the young.

‘Been here and there, Barry. Have you seen Milek?’

‘What you want with that boy, Angel? He’s no good for nobody.’

‘Then why do you let him in the club?’

A good question. Later on, a bouncer will stand guard at the club’s entrance, the better to maintain the joint’s exclusive image. But Angel doesn’t need an answer. Milek Ostrovsky is Prime Numbers’ resident coke and ecstasy dealer, tolerated because dance club patrons drink more booze and dance more dances when they’re stoned out of their minds.

‘Milek’s playin’ billiards, same as always.’

Angel heads for a large alcove in the back of the club. A full-sized pool table covered in red felt occupies most of the space, with just enough room on the sides to wield a cue stick. Milek is doing exactly that, but he stops when he sees Angel. They’d hooked up once upon a time, a weekend affair that temporarily satisfied Angel’s bad-boy propensities. Now she instinctively compares Milek to Carter and sees him for what he really is: a rapidly aging man in his mid-thirties, his hair thinning, his paunch growing, a threat only in his own mind.

‘Hey, baby, what’s up?’

‘Need to talk, Milek.’

‘Sure.’ Milek hands his cue to his sidekick, a bulked-up Latino kid so taciturn he might be a mute. ‘Finish the game for me, Carlos.’ He winks at Angel. ‘I’ll be back when I’m back.’

Angel follows Milek out the door, on to the sidewalk, then west toward First Avenue. ‘You’re looking bummed-out this evening,’ Milek observes. Angel has yet to crack a smile. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘I need a gun, Milek. Two, actually, a big one and a small one.’

A short skinny kid walks toward them. His purple hair is moussed into a stiff Mohawk and his bare arms are covered with tattoos. An unleashed pit bull lopes beside him, its pink tongue hanging nearly to the ground. The pit bull outweighs the kid by twenty pounds.

Milek and Angel observe a brief silence as they give the dog a wide berth. Then Milek asks, ‘Why are you coming to me?’

‘Because you once told me you could get anything.’ Angel smiles sweetly, but the challenge is plain enough.

‘You’re asking me to get you a weapon without knowing what you’re going to do with it. If you go home and shoot your boyfriend, I’ll be a co-conspirator.’

‘If I was going to shoot my boyfriend, I wouldn’t be asking for two guns,’ Angel says. ‘But here’s the deal, Milek. I have a thousand dollars in my purse. If you don’t want it, I’ll find someone who does.’

‘Whoa.’ Milek shakes his head. ‘What happened to you, Angel? You used to be sweet.’

The sweet part was never sincere, but Angel doesn’t avoid the underlying truth. She has, indeed, changed, and Leonard Carter’s the agent of that change. This is not a matter she intends to share with Milek Ostrovsky.

‘Two guns, a thousand dollars,’ she says. ‘Yes or no.’

Three hours later, Angel’s back in Carter’s Woodhaven apartment. Carter’s not home yet, which is all to the good. She carries her purchases into the bedroom where she lays them out on the dresser, a .45 caliber Ruger revolver and a .32 caliber Bersa automatic, a sub-compact with a seven-round magazine. Compared to the massive Ruger, the Bersa is nearly weightless.

Angel had examined the weapons in Milek’s battered Honda. The workings were simple enough. According to Milek the revolver had no safety. You point and pull the trigger, that’s it. The Bersa did have a safety, but all you had to do was flick it up with your thumb. At which point you were good to go.

‘One thing, Angel. The .32 probably won’t stop a man with a single round unless you shoot him in the head, so I hope you’re a good shot.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Then point it at the middle of his chest – or her chest, for that matter – and keep pulling the trigger until the gun’s empty.’

Angel has no specific plans for either weapon. But she’s watched Carter over the last few days, watched him head out to practice his marksmanship or his fighting skills, and she doesn’t want to be unarmed if Carter should decide to rip her off. She knows she’s not his match, but there’s always the element of surprise. Angel’s good at deception.

Angel hides the revolver beneath a stack of her panties in a bureau against the wall opposite the bed. The little automatic, the sub-compact Bersa, goes into the toe of an insulated winter boot lying in the back of the closet. As it’s the middle of May, the boot won’t be used again for many months.

Satisfied, Angel raids the refrigerator, piling a scoop of cottage cheese and a handful of blueberries on to a plate. She carries the plate into the living room where she pours herself a glass of Chardonnay and inserts a Ted Allen DVD into Carter’s player: Uncorked: Wine Made Simple. As Angel understands the trophy wife bargain, she’s obliged, or will be, to properly maintain her spouse’s household. Meat, potatoes and a bottle of beer just won’t do for the elegant dinner parties she intends to throw. Thus, she studies, perfecting her craft as Carter perfects his. Angel is majoring in Art History at Brooklyn College, reads every upscale fashion magazine she can find, attends weekend seminars on antique American furniture and French wines. When the time comes, she intends to be prepared. She will strike while the iron is hot. She will seize the day. She will laugh all the way to the bank.

Or she would, if her attention didn’t keep wandering to Leonard Carter. That business with the knives? By the time Carter finished, his body was as chiseled as the daggers he so carefully wiped off. The glistening sweat didn’t hurt either. Now she wonders when he’s coming home. What’s it been? Six hours? It feels like forever.